Friday, January 13, 2017

Why Does Alexandria VA Hate the Bay?

Alexandria’s efforts to address its long-standing sewage discharge into the Potomac River should be addressed by mid-2020, or the city will risk losing all its state appropriations, under a bill that passed a Virginia Senate committee Thursday.

The legislative action is far from complete — the bill must be voted on by the full Senate and then survive scrutiny in the House as well — but Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said that he and several of his colleagues believe the city “has the financial capacity to fix these problems, but it’s dragging its feet.”

Alexandria is under a federal order to stop allowing sewer overflows into Hunting Creek, a Potomac River tributary, and it has given the state a $188 million plan for how it will do just that. But half of the raw sewage — about 11 million gallons — that the city sends into the Potomac each year empties into the Oronoco Bay in North Old Town, and no federal or state order demands that be stopped.